The Tale of Tom Kitten

Once upon a time there were three little kittens, and their names were Mittens, Tom Kitten, and Moppet. They had dear little fur coats of their own, and they tumbled about the doorstep and played in the dust. But one day their mother, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, expected friends to tea. She was a most particular cat. She fetched the kittens indoors and washed their faces. She scrubbed Moppet first, then brushed Mittens, and then she combed Tom Kitten's tail, which he did not enjoy one bit. Mrs. Tabitha dressed Moppet and Mittens in clean pinafores and tuckers. Then she took all sorts of elegant, uncomfortable clothes from a chest of drawers, in order to dress up her son Thomas. Tom Kitten was very fat, and he had grown considerably. Several buttons burst off. His mother sewed them on again, but they popped right back. "Now keep your frocks clean, children!" said Mrs. Tabitha. "Walk on your hind legs and keep away from the dirty ash-pit. And please, do try to behave with dignity."

She sent them into the garden to keep out of the way while she prepared the tea things — hot buttered toast and a seed cake with caraway seeds on top. Moppet and Mittens walked carefully down the garden path. But Tom Kitten, who was rather too round for his clothes, scrambled up the rockery wall at the bottom of the garden. His buttons popped off again. One, two, three — ping, ping, ping — they bounced into the flower bed. Moppet and Tom tried to pull each other's pinafores straight, but they only made things worse. Mittens laughed so hard that she fell off the wall.

Just at that moment, who should come walking up the path but three Puddle-ducks — Jemima, Rebeccah, and a third whose name I cannot remember. They came marching in a line, pit pat, paddle pat, pit pat, waddle pat. They stopped and stared at the kittens with their beady little eyes. Then they picked up the buttons, the pinafores, and all the fallen garments, one by one, and put them on. The ducks dressed themselves in the kittens' clothes and walked away up the road, looking extraordinarily pleased with themselves. "Pit pat, paddle pat!" said Jemima, adjusting a pinafore.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit came down the garden path and found her three kittens sitting on the wall with no clothes on whatsoever. She was horrified. She pulled them off the wall. She smacked them. She marched them back to the house by their ears. "My friends will arrive in a minute, and you are not fit to be seen!" said Mrs. Tabitha. "I am affronted. I am entirely, completely affronted."

Mrs. Tabitha sent all three kittens upstairs. And I am sorry to say she told her friends that they were in bed with the measles — which was not true. Quite the contrary; they were not in bed. Not in the least. Somehow there were very extraordinary noises overhead, which disturbed the dignity and repose of the tea party. There were thumps and bumps and the sound of things falling over, and a great deal of giggling. As for the Puddle-ducks, they went into the pond. The clothes all came off, because there were no buttons. And Mr. Drake Puddle-duck and Jemima and Rebeccah have been looking for them ever since. And that is the tale of three naughty kittens who could not keep their clothes on, and three silly ducks who could not keep them either.